A surprise CD that came as a gift from a friend. This Brazilin
band label's themselves "Catholic Metal". In reality, their music
is power metal with progressive metal tendencies. I am not sure why the band
feels it is neccessary to classify themselves in such a way. For the most
part, their lyrics are straight from the Bible, and as I understand it, the
member of União
are from a movement of the Catholic church called the Charismatic Catholic
movement. Unless I am incorrect, I think that this movement of the church
steers away from traditions and adheres more closely to the Bible, which certainly
is the case with the lyrics on this CD. What we have here is the story of
the Lord Jesus Christ set to music. Musically, the band is hard to define.
While they play a form most often described as power metal, they also have
plenty of tempo and time changes within one song. Just in the first full song,
for example, the band starts off in a fairly straight forward, heavy power
metal mode, but about halfway through the song a beautiful piano passage breaks
way into a melodic, emotional ballad before returning to a heavier, power
metal riff. Even this is mixed with some neo-classical keyboards. The presence
of keyboards throughout this CD keeps this band from being straight forward
power metal. The songwriting is all pretty much like this; epic length songs,
complex song structures and plenty of variation within each song. The vocals
on this band are clean, but fairly mid-range and have a thick Brazilian accent.
While the vocals are not bad, I have a feeling he will get even better on
future releases. What I find most compelling about this CD, however, is the
emotion that obviously went into these lyrics. There is such a sense that
this band really believes what they sing about. Perhaps it is my own Christian
faith that gives me such a connection to the lyrics here. Regardless, the
emotion is very present. When the band sings of Christ's death in the title
track, you really feel the pain and emotion withing the song. That is impressive
to me.